Chris Preston and New Aquarius Online

Since I spend a lot of time making them, I listen to records obsessively. It’s what I do. I love to seek out patterns and similarities as I pore through my record library. Many of them involve what I know to be artifacts of the actual recording process. They show up in my recordings too. It’s also fascinating how regardless of the genre, making records can bring out the same fallibilities in even the best musicians. The act of attempting to capture the definitive version of a particular composition in a recording is about judgment, environment, ability and unfortunately sometimes, compromise. Many mistakes are made and parts done over. Technology allows all kinds of magic, especially now. In fact, part of producing a great recording now is about knowing when not to make the work surgically perfect, when to let the humanness of the performance shine through in all of its flawed glory. I heard Todd Rundgren say in an interview once that he sometimes leaves the flaws in a recording, because allowing a flaw to be expressed can be a form of catharsis. Hmm…

Nevertheless, sometimes a recorded performance goes sour almost immediately, in the first measures of the piece. Most of the time, the engineer or producer would just call the take a false start and tell the musicians to start again. For some reason, and probably for one of those I mentioned earlier, sometimes those flubs make the record. I always wonder why, having not ventured very far into a take, they didn’t just try again. Here are some of my favorite examples of “Didn’t that deserve another take?”

Majestic Dance by Return to Forever – I actually just heard this cut again for the first time in years. It has always been my favorite track from the Romantic Warrior album. It featured the most notable line-up of the band, with Al DiMeola on guitar. As early as I can remember, being a musician in grade school, I was hearing my guitarist friends rave about what a monster player Al was and how they hoped they would play as well as Al one day. (To my knowledge, few, if any, ever did.) An experienced guitarist, I can hear a typical guitar flub in measure one of “Majestic Dance.” He plays the chord on beat three, but I know what it sounds like when you just don’t grab it perfectly. Al barely got this one out and, like when I discover such a flaw in one of my own recordings, the weirdness gets louder every time I hear it. It would have been so easy to hit it again. I wonder why they didn’t. The piece is so badass.

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out by Bruce Springsteen – This was the first Bruce album on which Max Weinberg appeared. Fresh off a run in the pit orchestra for the Broadway musical Godspell, Max got his break with the E Street Band because he didn’t play like Ginger Baker. This track begins with a nice little soul fanfare. Then, it’s a solo buzz roll by Max leading into the main groove of the tune. They’d only played 3 measures and Max muffs the buzz roll! I’m sure Max had played a million buzz rolls, but this one, for posterity, sucked! Poor Max. I heard him say once in a talk he gave at my college in the 90s about his experiences with the band that the muffed buzz roll always bothered him. Me too. He’s still one of my favorite drummers. I only wish they didn’t allow him to be so horribly misrepresented. Even if the horn section had gone home, it wouldn’t have been impossible to punch in that buzz roll. It’s amazing what you can decide to live with when you’ve been in the studio too long.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? by War – This was a big single from a very interesting 70s band from East LA off an album of the same name. This track’s even got that feel-good off-mic chatter like a 60s party record. I managed to locate an original vinyl pressing of this album, still in the shrinkwrap, back in the 90s. It even had the poster in it! I love the sound of this it. It was the soundtrack for my summer barbecues for ages. In this single, there’s a high keyboard riff at the beginning that forms the foundation of the groove when the entire band enters. This record was a major hit, but in the very first measure, Lonnie Jordan just totally butter fingers the chord change! Happens to the best of us, but that’s a false start if I ever heard one! Hey barely even makes it through the second pass! Geez… To misquote a rap that appears earlier in the album, “Lonnie gonna make it real sloppy for you…”

Ventura Highway by America – This one is hard to hear. Maybe that’s what they thought too. With all of that wonderful California acoustic sweetness, your brain might be candied to numbness and never notice. I have a friend who’s a radio producer. He introduced me to the concept of the “post.” The post is that part of a record when the vocal starts. When DJs were important on the radio, it was always fun to hear the good ones talk up a record. A good DJ could run his yap during the intro of a hit record and sound completely effortless, finishing his sentence just in time for the post. It requires a good bit of musical feel and pacing to get it right. I think it works the same mental process involved in merging onto a highway without inconveniencing anyone. Sometimes, a lame DJ wouldn’t make it and he’d step on the post. (My buddy also told me about the unwritten rule of “Hotel California” and its exception to the post convention. Never talk up a record with an intro as long as that one. ) Anyway, listen to the wrong chord at the post of “Ventura Highway.” If the DJ was good, you would never have heard it.

Too High by Stevie Wonder – This one may or may not have been a candidate for another take. It depends on what instrument Stevie recorded first. He played everything on this. After one measure, the tempo takes a dive. It sounds like a burst of the musician’s energy that quickly got a hold of itself and settled. That’s not interpretation folks. That’s just what happens when you play all of the instruments yourself (I know something about this) without a timing reference. Any mistakes you make in the first track will always be there, no matter how many instruments you layer on top. If you try to overdub with a flawed first track, you’ll be a slave to that track’s idiosyncrasies on every pass and with every new part until you mix. Sounds on tape won’t breathe. They are on the tape, as is, for eternity. I’ve saved timing problems with a tambourine in my day, but no tambourine would have fixed this one. You just gotta follow it. If the rest of the tune was in the can by the time ol’ Stevland did the drums, I can see where they might’ve have wanted to live with it. However, if he did the drums first, they might have tried again, or at least cut the tape to include a more tempo-matched intro.

To be truthful, I kind of dig this one. To hear that even Stevie Wonder can be noticeably flawed makes me feel better about my own tracks. I felt the same way the first time I heard a tape edit on a Nat Cole record. Even Nat Cole’s takes weren’t all perfect. Now that I consider it, I listen to the tempo change on “Too High” for enjoyment.

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

This is an idiosyncrasy of mine. The most seemingly insignificant object or experience can send me into full-on Charlie Brown/Pig-Pen mode. I’m referring to a scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas, in which Frieda is complaining about the dust coming off of Pig-Pen and ruining her naturally curly hair. Charlie Brown responds to her complaint with an alternate, more romantic bent, suggesting that she look at Pig-Pen’s filth more subjectively. He proffers, “It staggers the imagination. He may be carrying soil that was trod upon by Solomon…”

That’s what happened to me this week when I was counting my change and discovered that I had received a well-worn and decidedly filthy quarter minted with the year 1974. In 2010, one almost never receives a coin of such vintage! My mind immediately began to race with the possibilities. Oh I would that I had the extra-sensory ability depicted in science fiction and paranormal dramas in which the hero can see the history of an object merely by touching it. What turns of happenstance led this aged coin into my possession?

1974…

The year of Todd Rundgren’s Todd album and the first Kiss album. I measure my whole damn life by records. No. To consider the circulation life of a quarter, one must concentrate on more mundane things. How many pockets has it been in? On how many dressers and nightstands? How many diner tables? In how many toll baskets? Public phones? Vending machines? Sofas? Piggy banks? Guitar cases? How many times has it been dropped from the roof of a skyscraper?

I received this coin in New York City. Had it ever left Manhattan? How many New Yorkers have been in possession of it? What were they doing? Where was it during the blackout in the summer of 1977? Who was holding it the day John Lennon died? How many times has it been some kid’s last quarter? (I mean, who cares how many people have held a $20? If you have a $20, you’re OK.) How many important calls have been made with it? How many times has it fallen to the sound of an operator asking for more money, long before the girl on the other end has forgiven the caller? How many winning tickets have been scratched off with it? How many losers? How long has it lain dormant in the muck under subway tracks or in a storm drain? Who found it and how? Who got it moving again?

How the world has transformed around this little piece of metal. Hell, I’m not even using the same teeth as when this coin was stamped. I got it as change when I bought my coffee, a large half-caff with milk. When this quarter was new, I doubt you could even buy coffee in more than one size. The closest you could get to decaf was Sanka. Still, it’s the same quarter from 1974 and it survives.

Coins are seldom considered this way, but they can have a value that nearly invalidates the monetary one. In the sound of them when they fall, in their lustre or dullness, in their durability, they are a freely floating symbol of undocumented human history and experience. When you hold one, you are instantly connected to all of those people and events. You become part of the continuum in a such an authentic way, yet it’s so easy to miss it.

Historical sites and monuments are the bold statements we make to ennoble and commemorate ourselves, but everyday life, simply surviving and learning what we are here to learn, is no less noble and no less worthy of commemoration. Goals and milestones are the stuff of $20s, $50s and $100s. Real life is a quarter. 

I had a birthday this week. (Aquarius) I enjoy birthdays and believe that we all have a right to make the most of our own personal holiday once a year. I’ve always felt that way. I was surprised that no one picked up on this fact when I was in high school and was absent on the same day every year. In fact, staying home on my birthday was probably the only luxury that being an honors student ever afforded me. It was the only time that I assumed some sense of entitlement with my mother, who never objected to my refusal to waste a birthday at school.

I spent this year’s holiday quietly with my family. I used the time to be my usual introspective self. After some consideration, I’ve determined that still, in a rotating sense of perspective, I want out, I want in, I must stop and I must begin. I won’t detail the specifics of each item here, but I was pleased to discover this time that I also have a number of things, as I scream headlong into a lifetime spanning two score years, that I have absolutely no desire to change. This is a departure from the customary list of resolutions that often stares back at me post-birthday and it pleases me a great deal. It shows that I’m living with purpose and enjoying the rewards of my conviction.

Having tacked on another year, it occurs to me today that to live a memorable and remarkable life requires not greatness but engagement. To be involved. The greatness that I long believed was the goal is merely the result. Engagement is the goal. Action. The goal must be pursued daily, even hourly. It is folly to aspire to engagement over a long period of time, such as a year. It makes greatness elusive, something for which there will always be time. In truth, a lifetime of countless moments of engagement is in and of itself one of achievement, value and greatness. These moments must be countless. Their numbers are our only defense against time that cannot be frozen and hours than can never be relived.

I thought of this while watching a video of Todd Rundgren performing one of my favorite songs. I believe the clip to be a sublime piece. For a moment, I allowed myself to become melancholy about it, since no performance by Todd at which I’ve ever been present has come close to what this clip seems to capture. I’m too young to have been there in 1978 and a great number of things have changed since then. However, I don’t believe that the moment in this video could have been planned. It only exists because of engagement, the pursuit of significant moments that, however unexamined at the time of their occurrence, as a gestalt may amount to something that can be called great.

My birthday gift to myself then, is greatness that defines itself. In realizing that I have things that I would not change, I’m already in motion. I have only to pursue the small piece of ground illuminated by my headlights, the precious few feet that in time will surely add up to a remarkable life’s journey if I do not gaze beyond, and miss them.

Rush hour music, indeed.